designer furniture knock offs  

Thank you to LRF
LRF:
Your warm compliments are graciously appreciated. Please be sure to visit us often (and shop) as we are constantly adding new furnishings, including more modern exotic furniture from South Africa in the days to come.

Response to Crankyd
Very well said.

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Just in case ModernClassicsCowhideRugs, or anyone else didn,t know, I live in Buenos Aires.
So although I could see how things are here, That is the way I see them, and been so near, one could loose a bit of ,perspective,.
I asked ,,Why Argentine and not China?,, because: Before devaluation(2001) that have been a ridiculous question, (and it could be for many today). Chinese products were synonymous of bad quality. Or cheap and bad quality. Not comparable to many local manufactures. But
things changed so much with devaluation????
(that was one of those things that people thought It was going to be the worst it could happen, and it became the absolutely the best). But it changed suddenly (from night to morning) ALL the rules.
For people with non local currency (tourists, etc.) It became ridicoulsy cheap.
I remember in 2002 how investors and ,purchasing managers, they flew like flies
to see which bargain they could find. I,been visited by Falabella purchasing manager (the Chile,s biggest department store)
(A very kind girl). Falabella bought (and buy) most of their products in China. And then she told me that China-Argentina prices were almost the same, and non comparable quality/design.
Since then (2002), I didn,t listened anything similar about it.

ModernClassicsCowhideRugs.
Thank you very much for all you have said. I agree with you in all or almost you said. It clarified me many things I had in mind.
I want to say two things:
1) I think you should follow Koen,s Advice, you should read all the material it,s written about knock offs here in DAforum (the 3rd post of this thread). You,ll need more than one day, but you,ll learn a lot. It,s the better source in the world about it. And even you have a lot of experience and thoughts about knockoffs, I,m pretty sure you,ll see hundreds of new perspectives, and points of view.
2) As you said, you have the opportunity to import stuff from Argentina.
Nowadays, Thanks what you have said, ,lower currency values in South America relative to the US Dollar,, If you visited Argentina these days?, are related to design?, You could see that Buenos Aires, had became one of the hottest design poles of the world, (thanks to devaluation again ????, people say that)
Some examples
a) Appointed as First design city of the world by UNESCO.
b) Is the city with more Design students and graduated (all areas: Industrial/Graphics/ cineama/ fashion/etc) all over the world.
c) Design is in the street, in the fairs, in the old lady, Design is in ,in the air,.
b) the exhibition,Destination Buenos Aires, at MOMA?.
d) It,s became in the place to study design for Spanish speakers.
e) etc
I don,t know how much it could last.... But there are lot of talented designers working mad, designing and producing gorgeous stuff.
In the Palermo Viejo area (comparable to NY soho), there are about 600 (???) shops almost independent designers and/or producers. (about 150 are furniture/objects/lithing/deco)
If you join 1 + 2: you are missing something:
Maybe, you are missing the opportunity to buy first hand ?first designers ,originals,, from talented designers, at almost the same price you could buy ,Chinese reproductions, (or ,argentine reproductions,).
If not, please check point 1 and 2.
On the other hand, I saw you stuff and I liked. You have ,cowhide rugs n pillows, and ,reproductions,, I would say that the rugs and the pillows are great, you have no competitor and the quality couldn,t be better, about ,reproductions, the quality is also great, as are from Argentina I know them, the only problem it,s that ,are reproductions,. And you,ll have to deal with people saying, that buying a reproduction,n asks you why it,s more expensive than other reproduction. It,s an annoying situation.
So I would put all the energy in the first stuff ,cowhide rugs n pillows, (I guess you know it because is the stuff that appears in the opening page of your website).
Thanks again for all you have said.

Bespoke Modern Classics is our Speciality
Thank you for your insight. Surpringly, I sell more furniture than any other product. In fact the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman Set is our best seller. But more importantly, our customer (individuals, interior designers, and corporate buyers) seeks non "traditional" textures and colors in modern classics.
Bespoke modern classic reproductions is our speciality and we do especially well with our Cowhide Barcelona and BRNO stool ranges. I will continue to market all Hides & Co. products as we are fulfilling a genuine demand.

please tell me
i have a great friend that made several wonderful pieces for my new home, I was at his studio today and he showed me some of greatest designs of modern furniture that he has drawn up and created , I have ever seen and i was blown away... They were so wonderful, they were so tastefully done nothing cheap with exotic woods, glass,lucite,resin,
Is it worth while to explore wood goods to be made in Argentina? They have had several products made in China and they turned out ok.(no DA people they are not making mid century reproductions) but they want to use the really exotic wood . The fellow who owns the shop here in town says he can not produce the piece cause a lamp table to make cost him 1800. US dollars just to bring to market with no markup I would love to know .

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crankyd
Thanks for your comments.
It was a pity, I didn,t know you were here, you should visited me!, And we could
,,,,,gone to a ,bar, to drink a ,cafe,,,, as the Portenios way.
LRF
I don,t know, It won,t work. May be you can post a picture/draw in another new thread and talk about it (I know, I know, I,m looking for trouble). Just an exercise.
ModernClassicsCowhideRugs
Sorry if ,it wasn,t my business,
I didn,t wanted to mess with your own business. But I wanted to get your attention, and show other point of view.

Market reasons
Everybody:
What I wanted to point, is this:
Another good reason for choosing an original instead of a copy is for market reasons and market demand:
When one goes inside the market, it,s not so difficult to detect which are the ,genuine demand, (business world words) or ,the last trend, (funky cool world words).
Although I,m ,,very far,,, it,s no so difficult to see that de Barcelona was very demanded (then 1st place now 2nd ) because the new number one is... Charles Eames Lounge Chair.
(Just counting the comments in the threads.)
But there are a lot of competition. Everybody offer the same. And every new competitor goes inside the marked offer a one step lower price (and sometimes a one step lower quality).
(((Ok, I,m not blind, I don,t mean that if the trend is black n white try to sell bright colors. Well, I don,t know, sometimes that works very well also)))
So, I love to find/create new products BEFORE they are ,the last trend. It,s not so easy to detect them as the ,last trend,, but not SO difficult either.
So the benefits to the community are higher, (and then, so, the benefits from the community to you, will be also higher). You,ll put the price, you,ll have the control of all parameters. You,ll be the first, you,ll be the copied, but you,ll have the tools to ride the market.
As I remember, this point wasn,t been commented before.
I don,t know what others think about it.

P.S.
When I suggested local new designers,I,m not working for the ,Argentine Promotional Design Council, or something like that.
And to tell you the true, I don,t think it will work. Just 2 or 3 are sending items abroad.
Because of the lack of economies of scale that crankyd said. Most of them they can not even respond to the internal demand.
Instead of argentine new design, one could find American, Northamerican, Scandinavian, Australian, or wherever (Chinise?, no I don,t think so?, by the way, It,s true they put all the energy in the copy, may be they don,t have time left to think something new, they,ll do in the future as the Japanese today. How good and different is the new Japanese design.
But I said it to point it.
When one goes to look for watermelon, don,t see how nice the melons.

Contemporary Chinese Furniture
There is a flourishing scene of contemporary artist and furniture designers in China, particulary Shanghai and Beijing. Currently, however, it is extremely lucrative for the factories to meet the world's demand for knock offs.

reportergirl
great story that you did on me in Metro, Thanks for including me. lots of people have called that saw the story.
It was a shame that they ran the two pictures of the Brno chairs and called them Barcelonas but what the hell.
I am sure 99 of the New Yorks had no idea and the other 1 percent new it was small picture error .

Barcelona Chair Production History
does anyone have or can direct me to where i can find a compiled dateline, listing, summary or definitive global history of Barcelona chair makers and distributors since 1929 to date? i'm in interested in pre- and post-knoll, including knock-offs.
thank you!

Karim Rashid
There was an article written in Metropolis or some design magazine saying that quite a few of Karim Rashid's designs have been knockoffs of other designs. I, myself, have noticed some of his products to look very familiar to other products I've seen somewhere before. This is a case of designer copying other designers.